Next for Zappa fans: Zappa Plays Zappa, a revival of the master's work led by son Dweezil Zappa, will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the live album 'The Roxy and Elsewhere' with three shows at that West Hollywood venue, Dec. 7-9, $65-$100

Before the lights went down, it was obvious Wednesday’s world premiere of suites from Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels at Walt Disney Concert Hall was not going to be your typical night at the symphony.

To start, there was what looked like security fencing partially ringing the stage, giving it the look of an asylum from which inmates have escaped. Another giveaway: cast members ambling around the stage, changing into purple jeans and sweaters and Zappa makeup – a wig of thick black curls, a droopy mustache and soul patch.

The most obvious tipoff might have been the oversized neon throne set up just behind the harp. Even the sound of the orchestra tuning up had a certain jauntiness played for laughs: when was the last time a choir’s warm-ups included taunting the audience?

Passive-aggressive, grandiose, impertinent, goofy – all the elements of Zappa’s musical personality were on display ahead of the first note. A complex and often contrary figure, the iconoclastic composer, who died in 1993 at 52, combined ambitious rock and modern “serious” music with puerile sexual humor and an often ugly streak of misanthropy.

Those elements all show up in 200 Motels, Zappa’s 1971 movie about the trials of being a touring rock band. Much of the music he wrote for the film was never used; these suites turn the full score into a performance piece. The L.A. Philharmonic’s staging, led by the orchestra’s conductor laureate, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and directed by James Darrah, is a multimedia production, scored for orchestra, rock band, choir and actors. It’s an impressive experience, one that reflects its composer’s best and worst qualities.

The moment the overture begins, with stormy echoes of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” it’s obvious that Zappa was swinging for the 20th-century classical fences. Coursing through the piece are elements of Ives (the cheery, Main Street dissonances of “Centerville”) and Varese (the witty percussion-laden musique concrète of “Touring Can Make You Crazy”) as well as free jazz and even Benjamin Britten (note the heaving chords that lash “Shove It Right In”).

With its well-planned atonalities, brutal shifts in time signatures and almost mathematical instrumental lines, 200 Motels draws some interesting parallels between modern classical and progressive rock. The arrangements for vocals (supplied by the Los Angeles Master Chorale) are especially striking: “This Town Is a Sealed Tuna Fish Sandwich” might be the first, perhaps only, time a composer made a connection between Stockhausen’s blood-curdling "Gesang der Jünglinge" (aka "Song of the Youths") and doo-wop.

There’s an astonishing breadth and invention to it all. Yet Zappa insists on undercutting the concept with easy and cheap humor, as if Seth MacFarlane wandered into the concert hall and smuggled a few rejected “Family Guy” gags into the score.

Some of this can be blamed on ’70s attitudes toward suburbia and, more disdainfully, women, who exist either as groupies or annoying journalists (who really just want to be groupies). But the sensation the production gives off is often like dealing with a smirking adolescent who thinks yelling obscenities mid-performance – or demanding the chorale wave giant phalluses during “Penis Dimension” – somehow makes a point. You can’t escape a sense of self-loathing: Zappa thinks less of you for laughing, yet thinks even less of himself for including it.

The job of carrying the humor (much of it directly from the film) falls on the cast, who are game and charming. Longtime actor and singer Michael Des Barres brings the right amount of sneering elegance to Rance, the occasional narrator; if anyone decides to mount a rock version of Cabaret, he would be the perfect MC. Joel David Moore scowls smartly as Frank, as does Jeff Taylor as Larry the Dwarf, both of them Zappa stand-ins.

Matt Marks, Zach Villa and Joe Fria bring slapstick goofiness to their roles as musicians, complaining about having to play Zappa’s “comedy music,” while Hila Plitmann, as a clueless journalist, nearly steals the show with her solo turn.

The evening ended, oddly enough, on a note of uplift: “Strictly Genteel,” which often concluded Zappa’s concerts, sent the audience off with the hope they find “some real satisfaction.”

There was some real satisfaction to be had here, for sure. It was a pleasure to watch the Philharmonic smoothly navigate the score more than four decades after an earlier incarnation of the ensemble, then under the direction of Zubin Mehta, helped develop the work a year before its movie version. And it's always a treat to see Salonen at the podium, a calm presence plotting a course through the thickets.

Having a world-class orchestra willing to take chances on nontraditional music like Zappa’s – a risk that paid off, as Disney Hall was sold out – is one of those artistic bonuses that makes active concert-going in Southern California such a fascinating pursuit.

Scenes from the world premiere of a new production of Frank Zappa's '200 Motels' Wednesday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. CRAIG T. MATHEW, MATHEW IMAGING
Scenes from the world premiere of a new production of Frank Zappa's '200 Motels' Wednesday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. CRAIG T. MATHEW, MATHEW IMAGING
Scenes from the world premiere of a new production of Frank Zappa's '200 Motels' Wednesday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. CRAIG T. MATHEW, MATHEW IMAGING
Scenes from the world premiere of a new production of Frank Zappa's '200 Motels' Wednesday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. CRAIG T. MATHEW, MATHEW IMAGING
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the world premiere of a new production of Frank Zappa's "200 Motels" at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. CRAIG T. MATHEW, MATHEW IMAGING
Scenes from the world premiere of a new production of Frank Zappa's '200 Motels' Wednesday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. CRAIG T. MATHEW, MATHEW IMAGING
Scenes from the world premiere of a new production of Frank Zappa's '200 Motels' Wednesday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. CRAIG T. MATHEW, MATHEW IMAGING

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